First Chapter, I hope you guys enjoy it. As a note.... the items in the "**" and italics serve as a sort of commentary. So if you were watching this on say TV, the item in the aforementioned be voiced over like a commentary or monologue. Think 'Scrubs' and 'Burn Notice' eh, even 'Malcolm in the Middle'
oh... as if you needed a reminder... PG13. Story originated back in 2012, and so I changed dates to update it a bit. 

Chapter 1. Happy New Year

She showed up to work and went through the usual routines of getting past security clearances before finally stepping inside the National Intelligence Service building. She looked like a kid there, tiny frame girl in black tactical clothing. Her boots were tiny, pants were small and you barely even saw her over cubical walls.

“What?! That’s what I have to do today? That blows! So not cool!” She protested after the team leader gave the orders. “Stupid agents... always using things and never cleaning up...”

She pouted and made her way back to one of the gunsmithing room and began assisting in taking apart a stockpile of rifles and submachine guns to clean. She was new to NIS and new to the team, she had barely seven months on the job so as the newbie and maknae she was given the burden of taking ‘crap duties’. Field agents, or rather these special secret super agents as they seem to be, had recent came from a raid and had checked out a variety of large guns. Some of them hadn’t even been fired, but there was a policy to maintain weapons after use.

Excitement came after lunch; sources have located a safehouse for a known terrorist cell so the tactical teams were called for the bust. She strapped on the leg holster for her gun and body armor and chambered a round into her MP5. Everyone was stacked and in position ready to bust into the house on the agent-in-charge’s (AIC) command.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Someone on her team asked her. He pointed to her back which had nothing on it. Oops, she had forgotten. She ran quickly and stealthily back to the van to put on the backpack with the medical supplies. She was told to be the team medic but had forgotten the bag, a medic needs the medical supplies, duh; sometimes she really just wanted to be a shooter. She hurried back to her position trying to avoid detection from everyone, you know just in case the bad guys had eyes on the building. She wasn’t quick enough; she heard the AIC’s command to go. The teams burst into the building with their flashbangs and CS gas. She quickly ran to her door way when the building exploded in front of her. The force of the blast propelled her off the ground and sent her flying backwards.

The next time she woke up she was in a hospital bed. She was lucky, the last thing she had seen was a short blast of light and dust and debris. She was furthered examined and given the okay to return to work which meant another series of complications. She had to write a report of her actions during the incident, it was a big deal considering the AIC was killed in the explosion along with several SWAT guys and agents. She was far from a trouble-maker, but she had an uncanny ability to get on the bosses’ case. She survived because she had forgotten a bag, pure luck but at the same time made her seem incompetent. She changed into normal clothes in the locker room and headed home. With gas prices just about $7-8 a gallon, she couldn’t afford a car so she relied heavily on public transportation the city had to offer. Her fitness level was good and didn’t mind the walk to the bus stops and subway stations. Little did she know, was being followed.

She returned home to her humble apartment and dropped down on the couch and sprawled out. She reached for the TV remote to turn onto the news which was hushed a bit about the explosion; it was listed as a place of illegal fireworks sells gone wrong. Then it hit her that it was New Year’s Eve and there would be several big firework shows later. She debated going out to catch the spectacle but it was some hours away. She used her cellphone to set an alarm so she could safely snooze away.

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“Yes. She lives alone. The neighbors? They can easily be dealt with. I can do it alone, I don’t need back up... Yes, understand. I’ll wait.” The phone clicked and he waited. Others arrived carrying bags and met up with him in the alley behind the complex. Some of the neighbors had left for the New Year festivities. Only a few remain, but as mentioned, they would be dealt with.

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“Shut up! Shut up! Be Quiet!” she yelled out to her cellphone and slapped at her phone. “Just a few more minutes...”

Fireworks began to fill the sky, and the sound of popping and soft explosions filled the air. She opened her eyes thinking that it couldn’t possibly be midnight yet. She sat up rubbing her eyes and looked at the wall clock and convinced it was lying, that's not the time. So she bent down to check her cellphone. A familiar sound of glass breaking lifted her attention to her TV. There was a hole in the TV in front of the glass screen with spider-line cracks spreading out. The TV is broken?! Wait, was that a bullet hole? She leaned closer to look at it and realized it was a bullet hole and turn to see where it came from, and turned to the wall to see a hole from the wall and then several other holes started to enter her apartment. Instantly, out of reflex dropped to the floor as bullets rained into her home.

**Nearly all armies regardless of country train and tell their soldiers to mind their surroundings and pay careful attention to details. Typically when bullets are flying people will naturally want to get down, but the next thing they do is cower, cover their head and close their eyes. It’s completely understandable but definitely not helpful in this situation. If you’re going to go down, go down for cover and look for a way to respond back. You want to see where the fire is coming from so you can evaluate your choices.**

She laid on her side with her arms up at her side as if she was a boxer blocking punches looking at debris spit through the air. She knew which direction the gunfire was coming from, the only problem was from more than one position. Whoever was attacking her was using the basic military ‘L’ method of fire. Shooters are positioned in an L shape around the target area and feel free to unload bullets without any worry of hitting each other, while covering the entire target area. That’s how simple it was.

She got on her knees and hand, grabbed her cellphone and wallet off the table and crawled away from fire towards her bedroom, or rather anywhere other than the living room. She had recently seen ‘Salt’ with Angelina Jolie, and thought she should have made herself a ‘bug-out’ kit as well, a bag to grab that would have things necessary for a quick getaway and survival. She cursed herself for not having one, at this time she didn’t have a gun anywhere in her home or a lethal weapon other than the knives in the kitchen. She rolled into her bedroom and grabbed the closest backpack she could find. She took night classes at the local community college to work towards a degree, she emptied the books and notepads but kept her laptop inside and crawled further to her drawer chest and pulled the bottom drawer off and reached her hand inside.

She had stashed some cash for rainy days. She had American Dollars, Hong Kong dollars, Korean Won and Japanese Yen hidden under a thin piece of cardboard, people thought she was lazy and never wanted to rearrange her furniture but really, it was because of the hidden money. She grabbed the last brick of bills when she heard footsteps outside the room. She zipped the bag and got up and ran to the door, they must knew she was in the bed room.

**You can tell a lot about someone based on how they enter a room. An amateur will enter slow, not clearing the corner fast enough and with the weapon out and leading, making it easy for someone to ‘trap’ the weapon and disarm him or her. A trained person will enter with the whole body and the weapon tight and close to their body. Commit, or don't. No in between. A good soldier knows that you never want anyone to take your weapon. Trained killers will be the same.**

A spray of bullets littered the bedroom before the door flung open. The man with the silenced automatic weapon was trained. In fact, so well trained that he turned the corner entering the room and spotted her waiting to attack him. She reacted quickly enough to grab at the muzzle and push it away from her body and kicked in the groin. Her first kick was light but her second was quite stronger.

**It doesn’t matter what you plan to do in a situation. If you want to attack or run, you have to fully commit to the choice. It can’t be done half-heartedly. If you attack and there happens to be more than one bad guy... well maybe it would have been better to run.**

The man went down from the kick but he had friends behind him, she reached for the knife strapped to the chest of the groaning man (who waiting for the pain to disappear from his ‘apples’) and stabbed at the second guy in line multiple times in the chest and pushed him back out the door and ran further into her room for the far wall. It felt like forever but her entire fight lasted less than a minute really; two at most (in which case they weren’t as greatly trained as she thought). Either way, not enough time for her to grab a gun to fire at the bad men.

**The average drywall found in a residential building and walls are essentially paper holding together some gypsum plaster, or some other soft compounded rock; with enough force one could easily break through the wall and enter your neighbor’s apartment as a mean of escape when the doors and windows aren’t an option. Of course having a knife does help and make it easier; cut through the wall and fight through the insulation and kick out the other side and hope they didn’t put furniture in the way.** 

She kicked her way through wall and entered into her neighbor’s bedroom. She slowed her movements to catch her breath and made her way to the living room to find her neighbors had been executed with gunshots to the head. What the hell? She didn’t really know them but in no way they deserved to die, they were caught off guard. It was curious as to why they would kill her neighbors but then ran for the front door as a shotgun blast blew at her direction from down the hall. There were guys waiting in the apartment there for her too, she caught a pellet or two running away.

**Shotguns are traditionally a hunting and sport gun, but in combat they work nice in close quarters. They’re scary as hell and dangerous, but they have limitations. The average round has low velocity and spread, even the buckshot. This is good for you just run further way and put things in between you and the gun to slow the penetration of the pellets. It won’t be lethal but it will sting like a .** 

She kicked the door open only to meet another bad guy, she kicked him in the groin too and this time grabbed his weapon and fired down the hall at the other bad guys. She wasn’t trying to kill them but keep their heads down so she could run. No one seem to be bothered by all the ruckus, the fireworks show was loud but in no way that loud. She pushed at the elevator button to go down and ran up the stairs for the roof. Hoping they would take the bait and follow the elevator down. She got to the roof to find it empty and run for the next closest building. She knew the next building was about a meter taller but was definitely within her reach. She ran and leaped off the edge of her building and landed with her hands holding the edge of the taller buildings. She let out a soft yelp from the hard contact made by her knees to wall. She pulled herself up and ran to the door on the roof and kicked it open and ran to look for another building to jump to.

**In American football, a common play is the misdirection; misdirection is also the biggest weapon a magican has. Get everyone to look one way and go another. I could easily stay in the closest building, but when your pursuers have guns and training, you have to create distance before you can create time. Hiding has too many risks and just flat our running gets you nowhere. Combine the two to give yourself enough distance and time.** 

She found the adjacent building to be a 3 meter lower and further away from her, another running leap and a careful tuck and roll on the landing allowed her to make the jump without any harm to herself. She ran for the door again this time went inside. She had heard voices/footsteps of the men before her jump so she knew they were on her tail hard. She ran down the stairs and used the elevator to go downstairs. Ding. The doors open and she walked out the lobby and into the street and got lost in the crowd.

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“She got away... understand... the situation will be cleaned... we under-estimated her. The others had been easier to deal with. Yes the others survivors were handled. It won’t come back to us. We’ll find her. Yes. We’re going with the revised plan. It’s being handled.” He clicked the phone and went back to work with the other members.

They began to stage the apartment and cleaned up any direct traces of themselves from the apartment.

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She felt like she took enough turns and doubled back numerous times to lose anyone on her trail. She finally took a break and sat down on a bench waiting for the bus and looked down at her feet. In the chaos she had ran out the house without anyone shoes; she didn’t even realized how much her feet had hurt.

“Damnit! My Taeyeon socks! Argiiiiiiiiiiishhhhhhhhhhh!” She screamed. Her outburst garnered strange looks from others waiting for the bus but she paid them no attention. The bus arrived and she swiped her pass and took a seat. She sat quietly until she found a stop she liked to get off at. She pulled out her cellphone and dialed away for help. “Hello? This is Lee Soonkyu. May I be connected to Mr. Song of Operations? Tell him it’s urgent... Thank you..”

She waited for the called to be connected through to the NIS call center, she didn’t have her boss’ direct number but knew the number to the front desk.

“Officer Lee? What is it, is something wrong?” The man answered. It was suppose to be a holiday but this call was transferred to him.

“I was attacked today! People tried to kill me! Trained people! They ruined my apartment and now I’m out on the streets. I’m not sure what’s going on. I think it’s related to work.”

“Well Lee, go ahead and find someplace safe to stay and come in tomorrow in the morning for work and we’ll see what’s going on. You’re not the only who reported this. Get somewhere safe, and I’ll see you in the office tomorrow. Got it? Oh and Happy New Year Lee.”

“Huh? Happy new year to you too sir. I will report in tomorrow,” She replied in confusion and hung up the phone. She walked a block to the public bathhouse she knew was there and checked herself in. She went to the restroom to change into the pink clothes. She pulled down off her shirt and faced the mirror to notice that she had two pellets barely lodged into her back and shoulder. How lucky again, non-fatal penetration from the shotgun blast she thought to herself as such pulled the pellets out of her skin. She washed the pellets and placed them in the pockets of her jeans and locked her stuff in a locker and found herself a spot to lie down and sleep. What a load of crap, she had to escape death three times already, some new year. Random sporadic fireworks still boomed over the noise of citywide celebrations. “Happy new year Sunny. It’s going to be a great 2014.”